Add Billing & Subscribe

Add Billing & Subscribe

Set Up Your Credit or Debit Card

Why Do I Need a Credit Card?

A valid credit card is required to ensure you are a real person and to help mitigate piracy during FREE Trial Periods.

Your card will not be charged as long as you cancel during your Trial Period.

Name on Card

Street Address

City

State

Zip/Postal Code

Country

Card Information

MM/YY

CVC

By clicking the 'Subscribe Now' button, you agree to our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. You agree that your subscription will begin immediately and that you will not have a statutory right to cancel and receive a refund. This will not affect your one month free trial period and you can still cancel at any time by logging into 'My Account' and following the cancellation process. You agree that when your free trial ends, The Great Courses will automatically continue your subscription and charge the subscription fee to your payment method on a monthly (or yearly) basis until you cancel. Cancellation will be effective at the end of each billing period. No refunds or credits are given for partially used periods

3

Olmec Art as the Mother Culture

Delve into Olmec art, searching for clues to who the Olmec were and what preoccupied these builders of Mesoamerica’s first great civilization. Explore the mysteries of giant sculpted heads, jaguar carvings, and full-bearded figures depicting men who some think were foreigners from afar.

Reviews

s********m

February 1, 2019

IIs The “Olmec Wrestler” a forgery?
According to Dr. Karen Olsen Bruhns and Dr. Nancy L. Kelker it may be.
"Even more beloved than the Xipe Masks is the so-called Olmec Wrestler, a three-quarter life-sized basalt sculpture of a seated man wearing only a loincloth that is the star of the Mexico City Museum of Anthropology. Since its purchase by the museum in 1964, a lot of ink has been spilt by scholars attempting to rationalize the eccentricities of this beautifully carved piece. But no amount of hyperbole can excuse the very real fact that the work is consistent with a western canon of art rather than with an Olmec one. The piece exhibits several eccentric characteristics pointing to its maker’s familiarity with western art, including a Renaissance ratio of proportion, Classical anatomical detail, and contrappostal movement. There are also several characteristics that illustrate the artist’s unfamiliarity with Olmec monumental art, such as an incorrect loincloth, bare head, ear lobes drilled rather than carved with ear spools, and use of the wrong type of stone. Despite all of this and more, the Wrestler is passionately supported by those who see in it what they want Precolumbian art to be. This is an enormous problem because the picture of Mesoamerican history presented by such works is a false one that distorts, and thus retards, our understanding of that history."
“Mexico’s Faked Prehistory.” Mexicolore.Co.Uk, 1 Jan. 2019
‌